Kathmandu, June 14 -- When President Joe Biden announced last month that the United States was waiving vaccine patents temporarily in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, it was first seen as a major boost to the battle against the coronavirus worldwide.

However, the hard reality quickly set in that it is not enough to just waive patent rights, the major bottleneck is technology transfer to countries that have the infrastructure in place for vaccine manufacturing, like Bangladesh, India, Thailand in our neighbourhood.

For countries like Nepal which do not even have that capability, news of the US patent waiver made sense only insofar as the help it could provide for India's manufacturers to boost production, and develop new vaccines to ke...